It turns out that court optician Waldstein has thoroughly cheated me! For nearly a whole week I was concerned that my power of vision would still not improve; and look: by chance I pick up the pince-nez I had worn before and notice that it is incomparably more precise and sharp than the two pairs of glasses that the cheat had claimed to be just as strong as the pince-nez. A bookkeeper played the role of optician, and had the genuine Viennese unscrupulousness to make out that my stronger pince-nez and the weaker pair of glasses were of the same strength and, accordingly, to offer me the apparently equally strong Zeiss lenses. To this shabby person, all lenses appear to be equally strong, even when four different ones are at hand! The influence that such deceit may have can clearly be seen when one considers that the lens that in reality is the weaker, but on the basis of false information is taken to be stronger, time and again delayed the illusion of an improvement. I felt unnecessarily unwell, merely because I was still not aware of the deceit! – The matter still awaits a resolution!

*

Humanity has fervor enough! It gives it in holy rapture to all manner of divinities and saints. How is it to be explained, then, that it does not idolize its great geniuses and creators of good things, or at least reckon them among the saints? Never will humanity even begin to consider the idea of pronouncing a {423}Goethe, a Beethoven or a Mozart saintly, instead of the many other saints! The reason for this sad manifestation, however, is this: taking everything that is called human only cheaply, all too cheaply, the great human race itself is likewise able to behold its saints only in the realm of the cheapest humanity. The empty piety, which superfluously always seeks the favor of God and not of mankind, and which I call empty because God does not need piety to assist him – although humans do need the help of the empty martyrdom of dying for something whose content one cannot know, the empty help, which comes to poor people not with help but merely with words of comfort. In short: all images of an empty humanism that is turned to the address of the divinity are things that humanity overvalues just as much as its own words, its own empty piousness, its own asocial drive towards something pleasing to God or humans – that is, its wish to arrange a rescue befitting humanity. They canonize people who have been of no use. But men who have brought accomplishments to fruition, these they place apart from the saints outside of the queue, and they do not know that these creators have been, and still are, the most saintly! The lack of understanding and gratitude for true accomplishments is thus what prevents humanity from honoring its creators. Instead of reducing the saints merely to monuments and canonizing the geniuses, humanity does it the other way around – to their own detriment. Thus Carlyle is in the wrong when he regards all saints as geniuses. One cannot be a genius without a deed, whereby under "deed" one should not understand an empty promise of an unearthly comfort, but the fulfillment of a very earthly accomplishment! I am not undervaluing the blessing that wells up from the comfort of religion – but the weight of a clever accomplishment of a genius is a thousand times greater!!!

*

In the afternoon, Mr. Breisach appears with Mr. Steiner. A disoriented, perhaps {424} definitively snobbish milieu, ingratiating itself in the delusion of a practical meaning, still prouder of the company of concert artists; in short – a difficult task, rightly, to develop the corrupt mind of a young person in spite of his surroundings!

It turns out that court optician Waldstein has thoroughly cheated me! For nearly a whole week I was concerned that my power of vision would still not improve; and look: by chance I pick up the pince-nez I had worn before and notice that it is incomparably more precise and sharp than the two pairs of glasses that the cheat had claimed to be just as strong as the pince-nez. A bookkeeper played the role of optician, and had the genuine Viennese unscrupulousness to make out that my stronger pince-nez and the weaker pair of glasses were of the same strength and, accordingly, to offer me the apparently equally strong Zeiss lenses. To this shabby person, all lenses appear to be equally strong, even when four different ones are at hand! The influence that such deceit may have can clearly be seen when one considers that the lens that in reality is the weaker, but on the basis of false information is taken to be stronger, time and again delayed the illusion of an improvement. I felt unnecessarily unwell, merely because I was still not aware of the deceit! – The matter still awaits a resolution!

*

Humanity has fervor enough! It gives it in holy rapture to all manner of divinities and saints. How is it to be explained, then, that it does not idolize its great geniuses and creators of good things, or at least reckon them among the saints? Never will humanity even begin to consider the idea of pronouncing a {423}Goethe, a Beethoven or a Mozart saintly, instead of the many other saints! The reason for this sad manifestation, however, is this: taking everything that is called human only cheaply, all too cheaply, the great human race itself is likewise able to behold its saints only in the realm of the cheapest humanity. The empty piety, which superfluously always seeks the favor of God and not of mankind, and which I call empty because God does not need piety to assist him – although humans do need the help of the empty martyrdom of dying for something whose content one cannot know, the empty help, which comes to poor people not with help but merely with words of comfort. In short: all images of an empty humanism that is turned to the address of the divinity are things that humanity overvalues just as much as its own words, its own empty piousness, its own asocial drive towards something pleasing to God or humans – that is, its wish to arrange a rescue befitting humanity. They canonize people who have been of no use. But men who have brought accomplishments to fruition, these they place apart from the saints outside of the queue, and they do not know that these creators have been, and still are, the most saintly! The lack of understanding and gratitude for true accomplishments is thus what prevents humanity from honoring its creators. Instead of reducing the saints merely to monuments and canonizing the geniuses, humanity does it the other way around – to their own detriment. Thus Carlyle is in the wrong when he regards all saints as geniuses. One cannot be a genius without a deed, whereby under "deed" one should not understand an empty promise of an unearthly comfort, but the fulfillment of a very earthly accomplishment! I am not undervaluing the blessing that wells up from the comfort of religion – but the weight of a clever accomplishment of a genius is a thousand times greater!!!

*

In the afternoon, Mr. Breisach appears with Mr. Steiner. A disoriented, perhaps {424} definitively snobbish milieu, ingratiating itself in the delusion of a practical meaning, still prouder of the company of concert artists; in short – a difficult task, rightly, to develop the corrupt mind of a young person in spite of his surroundings!